Software development tools foster the development of new software applications. However, the existing systems include limited tools for servicing the software over its lifecycle. For example, none of the tools provides efficient patch deployment capability integrated into the regular development cycle. The existing tools simply take the final binary output of two separate build passes and attempt to create an incremental update.
In some contexts, the incremental updates created by existing systems are still too large. For example, when sending an over-the-air update to a mobile computing device, such as a mobile phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA), even a small incremental update may consume a significant amount of bandwidth. This prevents other applications from using the bandwidth, and consumes battery power. This in turn degrades the user experience. The existing systems fail to provide incremental updates that are suitable for transmission to mobile computing devices. Efficiencies with building the next version of a software-based application or system using knowledge of the previous version offer distribution and installation benefits to even personal computer based systems.